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We have a 41 year old that just was mvp of the league and put up 500 yards in the Superbowl. That's what got you to conclude it's time to make the switch? And 45 to win? I'd take Brady over Jimmy to do that right now.
I get it, I want answers too, but I have accepted that we aren't getting any until Bill does another documentary or writes a book. I guess I look at it as I accept Bill for all his frustrating maddening BS, why can't everyone else? That's me, projecting. I'm ready to move on, even if TB12 and the rest aren't.
My point is that even with a game plan that as you said was fine (I would say much better than fine) they still made a critical mistake at a critical time that helped lead to the loss.
Basically if you want to lay the loss at the feet of the coaches for how bad the defensive game plan was how do you reconcile that with the fact their offensive game plan kept them in it until the final minutes of the game?
I’ve said in other posts that mistakes happen. For every team in every game. But the key, and this is especially so in the Super Bowl when you’re playing a higher caliber opponent with more offensive firepower, is to limit them. The game plan did that group zero favors. That’s been established in this thread as even opponents to that claim can’t estavlish that the game plan wasn’t a problem. Nor can that establish that the match-ups that the game plan put key positional groups in were favorable. Hence, the game plan sunk the game on that side of the ball. That’s on the coaches. On that side of the ball, the buck stops with Belichick. So the blame lays at his feet.
Players can whine about coaching decisions in any loss. Patriot players are well aware that Belichick gives them a better chance to win than any coach could.
Clearly, we have too many Flowers’ on this team.
I think my big problem with you on this one is that you seem to only want to leave the blame solely at the feet of Bill. Bill benching one player does not forgive all the other mistakes. You seem to think no one could do no wrong because Bill put them somewhere that doing right was a little more difficult than the previous week with Butler. If Butler had been hurt and the game plan was the same I think your stance would be very different.
This is faulty logic on many levels. Taking the point of view you laid out in your first two sentences, no coach in NFL history should ever be blamed for a loss. Almost every player in any game in any sport that’s played at a competitive level makes mistakes throughout the game. The Patriots are no exception. The key, and Belichick himself has said this multiple times, is limiting them. However, when the game plan itself is a mistake a forces multiple players at multiple key positions to do something that they’re simply not good at, it becomes nearly impossible to limit those mistakes on that side of the ball. So, effectively, the game plan itself betrayed them. The game plan sunk the defense more than any one mistake that was made on the field. That gets laid at the feet of the coaches on that side of the ball and, since the buck stops with Belichick there, that’s where the blame goes. Unless you can seriously tell me that you believe that Richards covering Ertz over Chung, Chung cover Agholor over Rowe, and Rowe manning the CB2 position over Butler (on top of Bademosi even being on the field at all) are match-ups that you love, you agree with me on that.
I might agree with you if this were a true arms-length media question. But this was Jim Gray, Brady's hand-picked media guy. That question was fed to Gray to set up Brady to give the answer he did. So you have to ask yourself why Brady wanted that question and answer out there.
I'm not saying Butler was injured I'm saying had he been injured the game plan would have been the same. The point is players miss games all the time and schemes and plans get adjusted accordingly and players still are expected to execute regardless. Butler's absence does not let everyone else's mistakes get ignored or somehow blamed on Bill.
Making a mistake is not a problem. Refusing to correct it is.
